On the advice of one of Threepenny‘s long-term subscribers, I have started reading The Magic Mountain. I would say re-reading, but I never managed to make it through this massive Thomas Mann novel before. Though I am an immense fan of Buddenbrooks and (more recently) Doctor Faustus, this one always struck me as too tedious. But now I find that its splendid considerations of tedium are precisely what’s called for in our present life.
Here, for instance, is a passage from a larger section called “Excursus on the Sense of Time”:
“Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interestingness and novelty of the time-content are what ‘make the time pass’; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. This is only true with reservations. Vacuity, monotony, have, indeed, the property of lingering out the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large time-units, to the point of reducing them to nothing at all… Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uniformity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares… We are aware that the intercalations of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, retard, and rejuvenate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is the purpose of our changes of air and scene…”
Pretty great, eh? As always, I recommend the H. H. Lowe-Porter translations. She is my Constance Garnett of Mann translators, possibly inaccurate but eternally compelling as a stylist, and I prefer her to all newcomers thus far.
I read The Magic Mountain when I was 19…57 now and it has never left me—resonating more keenly than anything I’ve read before or since. The passage you cited has haunted me for almost 40 years. Favorite chapter: Snow.
Haven’t got there yet, but will look for “Snow” when it arrives.
I read it in high school. I was so entranced by it that I read every other thing by Mann that I could find. In 2004 I went to the Curonian Spit of Lithuania and spent a week in the village of Nida where Mann had a summer house during the 1930’s when it was still part of East Prussia. It was March, still cold, the house overlooks the Curonian Lagoon-it still was closed up. Nobody was around. Every day I would walk over to the house and just soak in the view and the vibe. This was what he saw when he was writing! I went there just to see his house! I daresay I felt almost as obsessive as a certain someone who went to Sweden to trace the steps of a fictional detective named Martin Beck!
Thank you, Vick — what a great comment to receive!
I had never read the Martin Beck series. Then I read “Scandinavian Noir” and quickly realized I had to read these books ASAP. I am currently on book #6 and now I understand your affection for them. They are wonderful. I am in touch with your publicist at FSG and I would love to have you on my radio show to talk about your book in August after you return from vacation.
We need an online reading group for Magic Mountain, read it slowly, maybe ten pages a day.
This is my favorite novel of all time. My thoughts on my blog under Magic Mountain, davos-platz.blogspot.com
Snow is amazing!